46 | JANUARY 27 • 2022
46 |
JANUARY 27 • 2022

ARTS&LIFE
THEATER

O

n March 11, 2020,
casting for the
workshop reading
of the musical An Officer and a
Gentleman, The Musical was a go.
And then Broadway shut down
the next day.
In April 2020, the first script
reading of An Officer and a
Gentleman was moved from
in-person to Zoom.
“
And then the world went
silent,” said Dan Lipton,
An Officer and a Gentleman
music supervisor, arranger
and orchestrator. “I honestly
thought, at that point, that the
project would just disappear.
But our team at Work Light
Productions decided that we
would forge ahead. And, with
their financial resources and
logistical know-how, we were
able to have the workshop.”
That was in November 2020,
pre-vaccine days. So 18 cast
members and 10 creatives
from the production team
went into a quarantined bubble
in Cleveland to hold the
in-person script workshop. For
three weeks, they only went
back and forth from the hotel
to the rehearsal hall.
“That workshop is the
reason why the show exists
and why we are able to go out
on tour,” said Lipton, who
has been the music director

for many Broadway legends
including Kelli O’Hara, Audra
McDonald, Brian d’Arcy
James, Sherie Rene Scott, John
Lithgow, Judy Kuhn and for
Sting’s The Last Ship.
The first U.S. tour of
An Officer and a Gentleman
launched on Oct. 15, 2021,
in Elmira, New York, and
will come to Detroit’s Fisher
Theatre Feb. 1-13. Prior to this
production, previous versions
of the musical were performed
in Australia in 2012 and the
U.K. in 2018.
“The show is all about the
American military, so it’s very
appropriate that we’re finally
putting it on in the U.S.,”
says Lipton, who grew up in
a cultured, upper middle-
class Jewish family in New
Jersey and received his music
composition degree from
Northwestern University.
“My songwriting heroes —
Stephen Sondheim, Irving
Berlin, Stephen Schwartz,
Marvin Hamlisch and Oscar
Hammerstein — were all
Jewish.”
As a kid, Lipton, 46, attended
Broadway shows, performat at
arts summer camp, the high
school preparatory division
of Mannes School of Music in
New York City and watched
MTV. “Those MTV hits are

An Of
cer and a Gentleman
comes to the Fisher Theatre.

JULIE SMITH YOLLES CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Wes Williams and
Mia Massaro star
in An Officer
and a Gentleman

An

’80s Music
Homage to